Identifying and quantitating molecular structures on surfaces is an important aspect of manufacturing of many products, including computer wafers. In many situations, manufacture of such wafers requires numerous steps of chemical mechanical polishing, deposition of metal layers, deposition of dielectric materials, and deposition and removal of masking materials. Manufacturing steps have become critical to production of high-speed, small computing devices, such as main-frame computers, desk-top computers, laptop computers, hand-held computers, cellular telephones, tablet computers, digital watches, sensors, and numerous other modern devices. As the size of computer chips continues to decrease in size, and the density of elements, such as switches, diodes, capacitive elements, resistive elements and other features on chips increases, measurement of the surface features of wafers and chips during manufacturing is becoming increasingly important to production of high quality products.
Other products including machined parts for sophisticated devices are also improving in quality and accuracy. However, during manufacture of such products, environmental and manufacturing conditions may result in deposition of unwanted materials on the surfaces of such products and the parts that make up the products. As the accuracy and consistency of manufacture of many products increases, detection of contaminants is becoming more important.